(excerpt)

It was three AM when the missile fell into our backyard.  If it hadn’t been so hot I might have missed its long, clear whistle and dead thud against the lawn.

That summer, sleep was a game of trickery—reinterpreting the warm air, coaxing stiff muscles to give against the heat.  The flannel sheets I’d brought from Canada took up space in the closet and both of us, Ben and I, sweated onto a thin bed cover.  I ran my arm under the cool side of the pillow.  Breathed in. Breathed out.

Beside me, Ben lay heavy in sleep.  A child of this weather, he dreamed in Hebrew and his lips twitched to words I didn’t yet know.  We were a mismatched pair, but love was love, and we could say it in both languages.  When we’d first met in Eliat, he’d pointed to the sky to describe where he lived.  In the north.

A change in the stagnant air.  Any breeze was a salve—in a moment it could send me to sleep on the cool grass, on the tiled poolside.  But this breeze, on this night, came from the air being parted.  I pulled the curtain back and saw a shadow penetrating the yard.  Its peal gave it the sheen it was missing—a metallic dirge, glinting before it hit.  It tanked onto the pomegranate bushes.

I waited too long, I think.  I choked back excited laughter, almost pointing and clapping.  Look at that!